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As the final votes are counted in the 2020 election, misinformation swirls online, from unsubstantiated fraud allegations to misleading statements about the results.
“We have been overwhelmed by the amount of different misinformation that exists,” said campaign manager Oscar Soria of Avaaz, a nonprofit that has been tracking misleading posts and flagging them on Facebook. The consequences, he said, can be dire.
“The threat is real … The disorientation this has caused is undermining faith in American democracy,” he said.
This week, Soria said, the group has tracked down numerous posts in Spanish with false, fear-provoking information about post-election protests and unsubstantiated fraud accusations.
And the origin of many posts can be difficult to determine, he said.
“People are replicating and amplifying messages, from Latin America, from here. They replicate things and we don’t know where they come from. There are constant conspiracy theories. They are repeating and repeating a lie until it comes true for them,” she said.
Pérez-Verdia said he was surprised to see misleading messages appear in WhatsApp groups and then see them quickly spread elsewhere, from Facebook posts to live comments on radio shows.
Since the elections, he said, publications have focused on alleged electoral fraud.
“They are repeating in Spanish that this is a fraud,” he said, “that the elections are being stolen, that the Communists are stealing everything.”
Facebook Says It Is Stepping Up Efforts To Stop Disinformation
Facebook said in a statement that the company took a number of steps to combat misinformation in Spanish ahead of the elections, including building a Spanish version of its voting information center, adding fact-checking partners based in United States to review content in Spanish on Facebook and Instagram. and partner with fact-checkers to develop a chatbot that helps people using WhatsApp get accurate information.
Posts in Spanish will be included in this effort, said Facebook spokeswoman Andrea Vallone.
Facebook and Instagram content will be downgraded by the company’s automated systems if the systems determine it may contain misinformation, “including discredited claims about voting,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement to CNN Business.
“As the vote counting continues,” Stone said, “we are seeing more reports of inaccurate claims about the elections. While many of these claims have little turnout on our platform, we are taking additional temporary steps, which we have previously discussed. , to prevent this content from reaching more people. ”
Analysts Say Online Posting May Have Real-World Consequences
As advocacy groups and party operatives begin to sort out the election results, many have speculated that the spread of disinformation online played a key role in turning South Florida Latino voters away from Joe Biden, especially publications that falsely describe the Democratic candidate as a radical socialist. . This may have sparked fears among the large number of Cuban and Venezuelan voters in the area, who fled oppressive communist and socialist governments to seek refuge in the United States, and their families.
“I think the level of micro-directed misinformation that was sent to Miami-Dade County and in certain specific areas across the country cannot be underestimated,” Janet Murguía, president and CEO of UnidosUS, told reporters earlier. This week.
Domingo Garcia, president of LULAC, said that Biden missed a great opportunity in Florida.
“You have many Latinos who do come from fleeing oppression in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua … etc., and when you do not respond to the label of being called a socialist and you think that this is not going to affect you, I think it was a big mistake from the Biden campaign … That hurt them a lot in parts of Florida, as well as parts of Texas, which I think they are there to win, “Garcia said.
Political analyst Fernand Amandi says that for months Biden’s campaign was largely absent from the conversation as disinformation spread online.
“In the information war, Biden’s campaign was not on the battlefield. I think that not being able to recognize the level of damage these attacks were doing to him and being able to counter them with his own message did great damage to the image of Biden. And the image of the Democratic Party, ”he said.
Seeing disinformation spread online was not surprising, he said. But seeing it spread without any meaningful response was.
“If these conspiracy theories are not confronted, for many people they become reality,” he said.
CNN’s José Manuel Rodríguez reported from Miami. CNN’s Catherine E. Shoichet reported from Arlington, Virginia. CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this report.
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